WASHINGTON/TEHRAN - With the United States drawing down troops in Iraq, the State Department plans to double the number of foreign mercenaries, who are officially known as private security firms and security contractors, it uses to ensure the safety of the huge civilian development effort, officials said on Thursday.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the plan would bring to some 7,000 the total security contractors employed by the government in Iraq, where since the 2003 U.S. invasion private security firms have often been accused of acting above the law, Reuters reported.
On Tuesday, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai issued a decree on Tuesday formalizing his four-month deadline for foreign mercenaries to disband. According to the decree, the tens of thousands of security contractors currently working in Afghanistan will have to either join the Afghan police force or cease operations by the deadline, The Associated Press reported.
Crowley said the U.S. military's plan to cut troop numbers to 50,000 by the end of August -- down from 176,000 at the peak of the deployment -- left a security gap contractors would have to fill.
“We will still have our own security needs to make sure that our diplomats and development experts are well protected,” Crowley told a news briefing.
“We have very specific plans to increase our security ... as the military is leaving. This will be expensive. this is not a cheap proposition,” he said, although he added the costs to the U.S. taxpayer would still be far less than those incurred by the military deployment.
The employment of Blackwater/Xe mercenaries have caused anger in Iraq, particularly after a U.S. court dismissed charges against Blackwater Worldwide guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.
Foreign mercenaries’ immunity from prosecution was lifted last year under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact that gave Iraq back its sovereignty.
In the June 4 edition of The Wall Street Journal, it was reported that Xe's most recent government contract tasked the group with protecting CIA bases in Afghanistan. The report was confirmed at the end of June by Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta during a TV interview, the newspaper wrote.
Blackwater/Xe mercs were hated by the Iraqis during their time in that country because they were able to kill many civilians with impunity, Press TV reported.
A senior U.S. official conceded “contractors” had caused problems in Iraq in the past, but said the administration was confident these could be avoided for what he described as a “short duration security requirement.”
“We've had tragic issues involving contractors in the past. We have worked this issue very closely with the Iraqi government. There have been changes over the past couple of years to improve oversight and accountability for contractors in Iraq,” the official said.
“We believe we can have the kind of accountability and oversight that is necessary,” he said.
Photo: Mercenaries from U.S. private security firm Blackwate